Appalachian Zen

Journeys in Search of True Home, from the American Heartland to the Buddha Dharma

De: Steve Kanji Ruhl

Narrado por: Gabriel Vaughan

This luminous memoir combines the hardscrabble setting of Appalachia with the spiritual wisdom of Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls "seeking our true home." Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew up—surrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearning—to become something improbable: a Buddhist minister teaching Zen. Author Steve Kanji Ruhl takes listeners on an adventure of discovery, roving far from the Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania on a footloose Zen pilgrimage to Japan and beyond.

Featuring vivid firsthand accounts of spiritual seeking and teaching in Japanese temples, as well as forays to Tokyo and Hiroshima, the alleys of Kyoto, Amish cornfields near the Susquehanna, and a monastery in the Catskills, Appalachian Zen includes rapt nature passages and cultural references ranging from Proust to punk rock. Throughout the book, Ruhl engages Buddhist themes of awakening and the death of the self by confronting the lives and deaths, including two by suicide, of his loved ones. This provocative memoir tells how it feels to practice Zen, and to move toward a life of hard-won forgiveness, healing, and freedom.

©2022 Steve Kanji Ruhl (P)2022 Tantor

Wonderful, insightful memoir!

What an amazing story. Ruhl is a masterful writer and storyteller that takes listeners on a ride through often overlooked corners of the world with insightful social commentary and personal confessions of a unique and inspiring life. It is a multi-genre masterpiece that is equal parts self help, history lesson, spiritual teaching and op ed. highly recommend!

Such a wonderful life story!

This book has it all. We witness a beautiful transformation of a man throughout, into the wonderful human he is today.
Love this book and highly recommend it!

Very Well Written

It was one of those books that I read and couldn’t believe was ending until it ended.

Disappointing and decending into insulting

After several long chapters about his youth in rural Pennsylvania I was ready to stop listening. I skipped ahead to until there was some discussion about Buddhism. Some of that was very good. Stories of dealing with his sister's suicide with Zen were very meaningful. The first 17 chapters were mostly autobiography. A long and dreary life story, focused on the his personal self and how special he was as a kid seems inconsistent with Buddhist teaching, as I read it. After time in Buddhist monasteries and graduating from Harvard, he goes home as a Buddhist minister. He sees Pennsylvania and it's people differently. That would have been a good place to stop. Then, in chapter 18, he throws it all away with a vile, hate filled, personal attack on the stupid people there and how dumb they, and everyone else, were to vote for Trump. From there on it's a sickening Harvard graduate spewing bile on those uneducated irredeemables. If you are not familiar with Buddhism, skip chapter 18. Too often American Buddhists assume all Buddhists are liberal and above "the others". There is nothing Buddhist about that.

Facile and Pedantic

On the plus side, the author's narrative about his childhood home was fascinating and heartfelt. However, the rest of the narrative felt to me like an exercise in intellectual onanism. His vocabulary is impressive, but I have been through graduate school in the humanities and can recognize big words for the distraction they are from insightful commentary.

I have studied Zen for almost two decades, and his understanding strikes me as very surface-level. I'm sure he understands more than was conveyed, but this is not a good introduction for the uninitiated.

Worst of all was his extended discussion of suicide. It seemed like he decided to have his own therapy session all over the readers. I barely escaped suicide myself, and this author has no idea how to approach the topic. It's condescending to the dead, and his use of private letters from the deceased in this public forum is frankly disgusting. This is a large portion of the book, so readers who may be triggered by his bungled and insensitive discussion should be warned.

This is a meandering, disorganized, and poorly written book. I'm surprised it ever met a printing press. I had high hopes, but was left utterly disappointed.